LAWRENCE PARK GRADUATE Debbie Pearson is one of the most powerful people in British theatre. The co-director and founder of the Forest Fringe festival in Edinburgh, Pearson was recently named to the prestigious Stage 100, an annual list of power players in UK theatre.
Forest Fringe is an experimental theatre festival that encourages playwrights and other stage artists to try out off-the-wall, avant garde material free of charge to playwrights and audiences alike.
Pearson founded the festival in 2007 partially as a master’s dissertation and partially as a reaction to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which she found had too strong a focus on money. She wanted to create a festival where artists could experiment, without having to worry about getting back a £10,000 investment.It appears she’s made her mark: while she was named to the top 100, no one from the more august and long-established Edinburgh Festival Fringe did.
Even though Forest Fringe was a critical darling before the Stage 100 was named, Pearson didn’t expect to see her name on the list alongside the likes of theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh and Kevin Spacey. “My co-director texted me to tell me we were on the list, and I texted him back to tell him the word ‘power’ would never seem the same to me again,” Pearson says. “Every publication said we were the most left-field choice.”
Pearson, who does performance work and is a playwright, says her time at Lawrence Park CI in her native Toronto helped set her on the path to professional success. It was in drama class that she first staged her own play. “It was a really, really bad play,” she says with a laugh. “But it was a good experience. Getting that first bad play out of my system really opened up my understanding of how to write plays.”
Her classic studies teacher, Mr. Collins, had his class pore over large swaths of ancient Greek literature and drama. The experience resonated with Pearson. She says she and her friends used to compete over who could read the most classics over the Christmas break.
Pearson has staged plays here at home,too.Co.ED (or How to Become Your Gender, in 10 Easy Steps) premiered at York University last fall, and she will also be travelling to Toronto periodically this year to be a part of the Playwrights Unit at Tarragon Theatre. The unit pushes writers to produce a script which is given a dramatic reading, open to the public in the fall.
